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FIRM DESCRIPTION: SunBridge Partners is an early-stage investor with offices in Palo Alto, Cleveland and Tokyo, using a proactive research process for the early identification of best-in-class technologies in sectors in which the team has several decades of experience and insight. The team has invested in 57 portfolio companies, including Salesforce.com and Salesforce.com Japan, Alien Technology, Flarion, and others, and works closely with entrepreneurs to achieve their vision. In addition to helping build teams and facilitate partnerships in the US, SunBridge has a successful track record of helping companies expand to Japan, through deep relationships with leading Japanese OEMs and the ability to navigate the often daunting challenges of international market entry.

As in all things, I'm sure your perspective varies dependent on whether you close with a given firm or not. That said, we were pleasantly surprised with SB given all the horror stories you read on this site, not that the overall process was a cake walk. We probably started with a universe of 50 firms, then whittled it down based on who had specific knowledge of our sector. At the end of the day, we were left with competing offers, with SB's perspective winning out when we extrapolated what it would be like to work with these guys over the coming years. The closing process especially surprised our board, given it being very efficient and fairly balancing the needs of our angels, founders and staff members. Even with an economically superior offer from a competitive entity, we'd still want to do business with them.

Posted by
yourjet
on 2008-01-25

PUBLIC:

I met John Gannon electronically via a connector about whom Sunbridge was conducting due diligence. I found John to be very cordial, indeed, welcoming and polite. His background is quite diverse which explains his range of knowledge and ability to share and understand both the space in which we are launching our company and our vision. Though he declined to invest in our startup, he continues to be available for direction and advice and networking. One of the few VC that are willing to invest in the emerging markets created by the Very Light Jet.